Latest posts in category Case Summaries on North Carolina Criminal Law Blog

This post summarizes criminal decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals published on January 18, 2022. Summaries will also be posted to Smith’s Case Compendium, here.

This post summarizes published criminal and related decisions released by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals during December 2021. Decisions that may be of interest to state practitioners are summarized monthly. Previous Fourth Circuit summaries are available here.

This post summarizes published criminal decisions from the North Carolina Supreme Court released on December 17, 2021, and decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on January 4, 2022.

As always, these summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to present.

This post summarizes published criminal and related decisions released by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals during November of 2021. Decisions that may be of interest to state practitioners are summarized monthly. Previous Fourth Circuit summaries are available here.

This post summarizes published criminal and juvenile delinquency decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on December 7, 2021. These summaries will be added to the School’s Criminal Case Compendium.

This post summarizes published criminal decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals released on November 16, 2021. These summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to present.

This post summarizes published criminal decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals published on November 2, 2021. As always, these summaries will be added to Smith’s Criminal Case Compendium, a free and searchable database of case summaries from 2008 to present.

This post summarizes criminal and related decisions published by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals during September 2021. Decisions that may be interest to state practitioners are summarized monthly. Previous Fourth Circuit case summaries are available here.

This post summarizes criminal decisions from the North Carolina Court of Appeals published on October 19, 2021. Summaries will also be posted to Smith’s Case Compendium, here.

Last month, the Court of Appeals decided State v. Austin, ___ N.C. App. ___, 2021-NCCOA-494 (Sept. 21, 2021), and a summary of the opinion is available here. Austin addressed several noteworthy self-defense issues, including the sufficiency of the state’s evidence to rebut the presumption of reasonable fear under the “castle doctrine” statutes added in 2011 and whether the trial court’s jury instructions on that issue were proper.

But first, the court had to decide whether the statutory language conferring “immunity from liability” meant that the defendant was entitled to have this issue resolved by the judge at a pretrial hearing. That’s a question I’ve been asked fairly often over the past few years, and my sense is that prior to Austin there were divergent practices on this point around the state.

This post takes a closer look at that portion of the court’s opinion, and explores what we now know and what we still don’t.